poemimage

The visual & the poetic.

Tag: Cocteau

Eyes (& Orphee by Cocteau)

I have been approaching an idea I am still approaching

I circle the idea again and again

for some reason I made this comparison of eyes.

Eyes are truly the window to the soul

The soul is truly a window to the eyes

The window is truly eyes upon the soul. 

I think of the glazier in Cocteau’s poetry-film Orphee wandering in the underworld. 

I have the VHS tape rewound & worn, rewound & worn.

I may watch Orphee again one day. It reminds me of somebody.

My very own figure of death no longer mine.

In this comparison:

Burl Ives: Actor ~ musician ~ crouching fire-starter, lonely hero, feet of clay, masculine subject-object, middle name Ivanhoe, dancing round the Maypole, related to composer Charles Ives. In the heart is the first principle.

Mona Lisa: Mystery-school perception, the sun-drenched alchemical Renaissance, feminine subject-object, diagram the ancient golden number, echoing feet, touch linen ~ hazelnut paste, envision the Milky Way. In the heart is the first principle.

President: The conceptual zero imagined in three-dimensions, museums collapse beneath clouds funnelling stones, candy cigarettes, a camoflauged animal-skin eye-patch, mythological gods stir in vengeful coughing slumber. Envision the absent first principle.

I may watch Orphee again one day.

When Birds Were Fish

cave mist 3

One could write poetically concerning When Birds Were Fish.

transformation in a white mist 4

Or When Birds Were Suns. When Birds Were Moons.

are the beatles going to play

Soaring and skimming from here to there, across times, flying into the rivers of the underworld.

are they building a bridge to the mainland

Emerging silently into the forbidding underworld of Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film Orphee, situated within the relic of postwar France: A modern world as silently old order as mythology itself.

O1

 Orphee, played by Jean Marais, interrogated by an underworld tribunal.

O2

Stating his occupation as poet.

square

To write without being a writer. 

flight

The Princess of Death, played by Maria Casares, asking him for a pen (to sign her confession).

face

Her confession of love. He has no pen.

face

She laughs. She forgot he is not a writer.

face

The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_o9l3OqPMk

flight

Film images courtesy The Criterion Collection.

flight